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Cultural body dysmorphia
Posted Monday 27 September 2010
A guest post from Zarathustra
In my Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) clinic we have a nurse specialist in eating disorders. She does a lot of work with kids with anorexia, trying to promote a healthy body image and encouraging them to move away from excessive thinness. And she's good at it too. The kids love her, and she's genuinely helped a lot of very unwell teenagers.
She may be a good eating disorders nurse, but she's spectacularly rubbish at taking her own advice. Despite having a healthy BMI and frankly, looking stunning, I still regularly find her flicking through dieting magazines. She'll regularly mutter about needing to "lose weight" despite ample evidence to the contrary, and she can't eat a biscuit without thinking she needs to spend an extra hour in the gym to compensate.
I could speculate that she's a kind of "wounded healer" figure - someone who's able to help others by virtue of suffering from the same affliction. But I've never seen any sign in her of having a diagnosable eating disorder. One could argue that her body-image is somewhat distorted, but mental illness is supposed to be a deviation from the norm. In recent years rampant body-insecurity, particularly among women, has become...well, normal. Have we become culturally body-dysmorphic, to an extent that those whose job it is to promote a healthy body-image (and do it well) can't escape the influence?
How did we get to this? One could blame capitalism, and a fashion industry making money by selling us unattainable ideals of perfection. But there's a problem with that explanation. I recently attended a talk by Ben Barry, creator of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. He pointed out that size zero isn't just immoral, it's also spectacularly bad business sense. Contrary to the assertions of fashion designers and modelling agencies, super-skinny, heavily-photoshopped models simply don't sell the clothes and cosmetics that they wear. The message they project is, "This product is out of your league. You're too fat, old or imperfect for it. Do not buy this product."
When Barry persuaded designers to switch to a diverse range of models (including overweight, older and disabled women) sales of the products went up, not down. Those who promote size zero aren't just doing it at the expense of womens' mental and physical health. They do it at the expense of their own profit margins. They've been driven mad by their own poison.
Have a look at this video. It shows the extent to which culture has distorted our own body-images. This isn't a healthy trend at all, and it needs to be challenged.
Zarathustra blogs at Mental Nurse
7 Comments
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I'm with you 100% on this one Zarathustra, we DO live within a culture of body dysmorphia which is very sick and is making people sick and not only those in EDU's. I see women in their 70's still wracked with pain over their size and appearance. The western obsession with thinness and youthful perfection is to my mind as oppressive as religious or other cultural doctrines which we choose to be holier-than-thou about as westerners. We tut over face veils etc yet fail to see our own cultural burka. Women's energy and talent is wasted through the constant pain of modifying their bodies, and it's a very private pain. Women may not go out or do things they want to do or reach their full potential because so much time is sapped by this. The products on the size zero 6 footers might not sell but the diet and plastic surgery industry are doing a booming business. Fact is designers insist their clothes have to be modelled on size 4-8 with 10 as a maximum when the average dress size for a woman is 16. Although the fashion industry doesn't cause eating difficulties it does play a role in maintaining them.
My heart sank when Topshop, a favourite with teenagers introduced size 4 because on the whole size 4 was never in such demand before. If a new number is introduced people will aspire to it.
I've never understood why obesity and anorexia is not recognised as being two sides of the same coin, they feed into each other. There are many complex reasons why we have such high levels of obesity but when that's combined with a culture which vilifies anyone over a size 10 and views 12 as 'plus size' it's hardly surprising it all gets somewhat messed up. We end up name calling anyone who is overweight or underweight.
I remember when size 10 was viewed as thin, then it was 8, now it's 4, even the language speaks volumes, size zero - zero - nothing - don't exist?? There's even a double zero, what you're just a walking skeleton?
We need to invest more in our children to value themselves beyond their bodies because the consequences of not doing so are all too clear - ED has the highest mortality rate, then those who survive can face osteoporosis, diabetes, loss of teeth and bowel function, the cost is high.
Ever wondered why we don't have a radical survivor movement addressing these issues with a political perspective?
Think about it - what's the first thing a conference audience would look at? - her body.Makes it a tough call. Naomi Wolf was criticised because she was 'beautful' and Andrea Dworkin because she was 'fat and ugly'. Put aside whether you agree with their theories, their work was sometimes discredited on the basis of their appearance. All the media want is sick-recovery stories with before/after pictures, and mental health services want neat interventions with nice outcome measures which are easy to follow. We desperately need a more cultural-socio-political understanding -
Mindreader - I also hate the term 'size zero'; it's a size four in the UK, but we still say zero. Using the American term 'size 0' make it sound smaller still, and sounds like the anorexic ideal of being so small they are nothing, zero.
I am not against Topshop introducing a size 4 though. They are not responsible for people thinking they should be the smallest size in the shop. They are 'a favourite with teenagers' and some teenage girls are still very tiny. Sizes have apparently got bigger over the years anyway; if that's true then we would need to introduce a smaller size!
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The professionals should lead by example . Debating whether people can make their own decisions by informed decisions is irrelevent if the professionals think they are far more clever than the people they are serving. More input should be by user groups and a formulation to be regularly updated and delivered, within the servces . We are manipulated in society then told we, as service users, are manipulating in mental illness.
How can anyone have equality and make informed decisions if the professionals always know best. How can we 'take responsibility' if we are forever being undermined.
By the fellow worker having body issues, surley this is not a viable and healing environment for people to learn from. -
I think it would be very hard for any EDU to find nurses with no concerns about their size/appearance, I've only met one woman in my entire life who didn't have any concerns about it.How would we ever find nurses with no body issues?! Our culture needs to heal before units can offer anything remotely useful
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I found that video quite powerful, thanks Z, although it was concentrating on a womans face -- have Dove produced a similar video focusing on an entire body?
Shops will stock size 4 if it sells. If size 4 is available, people will strive to fit in it. It's a vicious circle
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The 'size 0' illusion causes anguish and sometimes serious health problems to the population...and it does not even sell.
Happy to read that my suspicions were proven right by Mr Barry.
Now, what worries me is why don't all marketing managers turn away from 'size 0'?
Not that I'm expecting business to be driven by concerns over the population's welfare. But, surely, the profit-margin argument should appeal?
Has our society lost sense to the point of ignoring advice which could lead to making profit? If even money doesn't talk nymore, things must be really going wrong ;-) -
Disordered eating will remain endemic in our society as long as we glorify dieting and thinness and view fat people as sub-human. Only with social change can we hope to heal this sickness, until then Mental Health Services will be overwhelmed by a sickness masquerading as something we do For Our Health.
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